Matanzas

Matanzas is a city in northern Cuba, located 56 miles east of the capital of Havana. The city was founded in 1693 as San Carlos y San Severino de Matanzas (its name, matanzas, refers to a "massacre" of Spanish soldiers by the local tribe), and the bay and port was settled by 30 families from the Canary Islands. The area became home to several sugar plantations, and the area came to have a large African slave population as a result. During the Golden Age of Piracy, pirates looted the warehouse at the Matanzas plantation, stealing goods from the area. Today, Matanzas is known for being the birthplace of the rumba dance, and it had a population of 145,246 people in 2012.